January 2009
My Zafira A 1.6 life 04 plate has just started running a bit lumpy and jerky. I tend to loose power when at low speeds, then the exhaust emmision light starts to flash on the dashboard. After a few seconds the light goes out and the problem seems to clear itself. I have been told that it is most lightly to be a faulty EGR VALVE.
If so, can any of you tell me where this valve is located in the engine, and how to remove it so I can fit a new one, any other infomation you might have regarding this problem would be most gratful to me also. Thanks.
{Shouting in header turned down} Read more
52 reg 307. Red flashing central locking light has started to flash rapidly when trying to start the car. any advice? the car will now not start
Regards Read more
has anyone sorted out this problem?
Hi all
My diesel 520 failed to start after a boxing day shopping trip. The iDrive was reporting fuel pump failure then cruise control failure, then reported it was launching some kind of Start Assist program.
Upon pressing the start button the engine was attempting to turn but was not firing. The symbol came up on the dash board showing the car up on a ramp, suggesting I should go to the garage, what a useful idea :-)
BMW promised to send someone to rescue me. We sat there for over an hour but no one came so I tried to start it again and sure enough it did start. Looked in the iDrive faults area and it had no reported faults and the car was back to normal - weird I thought, a minute ago the fuel pump was allegedly broken, the Cruise control had a fault and the start assist program had been started. Now the car is back to normal with no record of a problem??
The following morning I attempted to start the car again and was back to square one, fuel pump, cruise control faults, start assist message and the car on the ramp symbol on the dash board. So I called BMW Emergency Service, 4 hours later the BMW rescue service themselves arrive. He tried to start it and thank goodness it was still exhibiting the failures.
He plugged in the diagnostics and although the car was struggling to start and was reporting failures to me there was no communication with my car from his laptop!!! The BMW man said "I've seen this before", popped the bonnet up, pulled all the plastic covers out, pulled out a relay, put in a new one then the car started perfectly normally.
Did the diagnostics thing again and it communicated but there were no fault codes in the system. How ridiculous?!?! So if the car had started on his arrival there would be nothing for him to go on and I would have probably been charged for wasting their time etc etc.
Not to mention that if he hadn't seen this sticking relay issue before another garage/technician might have started changing the components being reported as faulty on the iDrive, fuel pump etc.
Apparently this relay provided power to the ECU, instead of the fault system reporting a no power scenario it reported loads of other stuff and apparently can't store a fault because the ECU has no power. Goodness knows what computer was throwing up all of the iDrive messages then??
Just thought i'd post this nice story in case some other poor unsuspecting BMW owners fall foul to this sticking relay issue.
Adam Read more
hi,do you know what relay it is?????cheers ady i have same problem and its doing my head in spending money and getting no where!!!!!!!
I'm sure I've read about this before either on this forum or on HJ's Telegraph column but couldn't find anything - sorry!
Last night I unfortunately hit a dog that ran into the road. The dog was fairly badly injured, but fortunately the owner turned up shortly afterwards (the dog had slipped its collar earlier, and he had been looking for it for some time). He didn't blame me even slightly for the incident thankfully, and took the dog to a vet's. I have the dog owner's name and phone number but not address (he was understandably in a hurry).
The accident has been reported to the police (I called them before the owner turned up) and I've been told I don't need to attend a police station.
There's some significant damage to my front bumper and I'm going to need to get it replaced (it's a 04 reg Ford Focus with integrated fog lights in the bumper, so not a massively cheap job I'm guessing). The car seems completely driveable.
I'm sure I remember reading that in these cases the dog's owner is liable for this kind of damage (via their home or pet insurance obviously). Can anyone confirm this?
Also, does anyone recommend whether I should either go via my insurance company and let them sort everything out, via a main dealer's 'Accident Assist' scheme, letting them sort out dealing with insurance, or by dealing directly with the dog's owner?
Any advice gratefully received! Read more
whereby it used to try and savage me every year
Fair Do's and respect to you and the dog !
I would fel responsible in most scenarios - Mrs P's usual binary view of the world is softened by our new Cocker - she challenged me only yesterday for daring to think of buying cheap food for him.
The thread about flashing oncoming Xenon-headlit cars prompts me to ask whether anyone can recommend night-driving specs to reduce glare.
I'm not au fait with the most recent issue of the Highway Code but seem to remember I'd heard that the Code's advice (exhortation?) is not to use such glasses. However, I don't get a headache (from oncoming headlights) when I wear my old pound-shop ones; and when I accidentally leave them at home, I do. (They're now falling apart, hence my searching for a replacement pair.)
Thank you.
AF. Read more
You can read all about Night Driving Glasses by clicking this link.
It is an Online Opticians and it explains in detail about what you should be doing to improve your vision/driving at night....
I have a touran 1.9 tdi (105 bhp) 57k miles with full VW dealer service history on the longlife service program.
It suffered a breakdown 2 months out of warranty and it has taken almost two weeks for the dealer to come to some kind of proposal to pay for the repairs needed. The car lost power while accelerating around 50 mph and a cloud a black smoke bellowed out the back and all kinds of lights lit up on the dash, we stopped the car asap. RAC (via VW Assist) surmised that the oil seal on the turbo had failed as the engine had no oil remaining in the sump and the rear of the car was covered. VW dealer sort of confirmed this although said they wouldn't know for sure until they started work on it. As it is out of warranty, they approached VW for a goodwill payment towards repairs. They say it requires a new turbo, catalytic converter and exhaust system. VW have offered 50% as a goodwill payment. This leaves us will a bill of around £1,400.
Is this resonable? Do I have any other lines to pursue? I have stalled them as they have had the car for 10 days (no courtesy car offered) while they've been waiting for an answer from VW.
Any advice gratefully received. Read more
Having just purchased an Audi 2.0tdi (on LL servicing as well..gasp!) , I'm always interested in the 'leave the turbo to cool' argument.
My own experience is that the diesel traffic cars I drive get thrashed down a m/way/around towns and are turned off straight away. We've never had a problem with them. Despite this, I still sit on the drive for a minute or two when I get home. Drive the wife mad.
Hello all
I would be grateful for some advice please. I'm trying to understand the implication of having a company car. I think I understand most of the pitfalls (and benefits) but am failing miserably with the Benefit in Kind aspect.
For example, on What Car company car tax calculator (and others), I get a figure for the tax payable at 20% or 40% per annum. Simple enough. But there's another amount, usually around £4K pa which is the Benefit in Kind.
Do company car users pay the Benefit in Kind and if so, do they pay the full tax and the BIK together? Or just the tax and the employer pays the BIK?
Cheers.
Shaun Read more
I think you are making the mistake that a lot of people do in working out whether a company car is better of taking the cash for car allowance.
In your example of being offered £4,800 which gives you £2,880 after tax you also need to remember that you will not be paying the company car tax that you would be with the company car. Assume this is £155 p/m (£1860 pa) then what you have actually got to play with is £4,740 per year or £400 per month - like your brother said.
I'm not saying that its better to take the cash, getting a company car certainly is less hassle and gives you peace of mind over things like servicing, but I think that a lot of people misjudge the value of the cash for car alternative...
use this useful link to work out the cash alternative on a particular car....
extranet.lvl.co.uk/hosting/carportal/
I own a late 2002 BMW 525d SE auto. Recently the car started running very poorly. I took the car into the local BMW specialist (not dealer) who diagnosed low compression!!
On stripdown it transpired that two of the swirl flaps had failed & parts had passed into the cylinders causing damage to one pistion & several valves. The repair is going to cost £2k & the mechanic said I was lucky!!
Swirl flaps are small butterfly valves located in the plastic inlet manifold of the engine.
Discussing the problem with the mechanic & searches on the internet have shown that this to be a common problem on all 6 cylinder BMW diesel engines upto 3 litres - so a definate design fault. In some cases BMW have paid for replacement engine & repairs - but this appears to be selective.
My car has completed 90k miles with full service history, but not BMW.
My question is this;
Do I have any recourse with BMW - after all this is a known design issue?
I appreciate that warranty claims have long gone but surely BMW have a right to inform owners of such issues (eg replace manifold at xxxxx miles)??
My car will be returned this week. I could not afford to put into a main dealer for investigation & repair. However the work is done to BMW stds & with BMW parts.
Thanks in advance.
Chris.
Read more
One of the best, if not the best engine remanufacturing company in the UK.
Hi there, I hope someone might be able to help.
My Focus as of late last week has developed a problem and I'm wondering whether it's something anyone else has experienced.
When crawling along busy urban road in 1st gear for a couple of minutes, when I depress the clutch pedal, the engine revs up a little from about 1000 revs to 2500-3000 for a few seconds before returning to normal. One pedestrian who I gestured to cross the road seemed unwilling given that he thought I was revving deliberately.
There doesn't seem to be any lag or slippage when accelerating though, only some increase in revs when pressing in the clutch.
Could this be anythig to do with an automatic choke? Or is ti possible that my clutch is about to conk out on me?
1999 T reg 1.6 with 65,000 on the clock.
Any thoughts gratefully received - will return about 9pm as I have to go out. I hope I've posted all necessary details.
Thanks
FD Read more
At least you've let us know. You're not stupid at all, sometimes it is the simplest things - and we look at the difficult possible solutions first.
Glad you've sorted it - a cheap enough repair !
We currently have a Corsa D loan car. Fine car in many ways, but not nearly as easy to park as such a compact car should be because even though I'm tall, I can't see any part of the bonnet from the drivers seat.
Made me wonder how many other car are like this now - so, can you see the bonnet of your car from the drivers seat? Read more
slightly off topic...
At the building where I used to work some intellectual giant came up with the idea of sprucing up the multistory carpark, with a nice gallon or several of semi-gloss white paint.
Very clever - considering a lot of the cars here are white.
After a week of people bashing their cars against the walls and pillars, because they could no longer see where the car ended and use it as a reference point when manouevering, due to the white-on-white scenario, the management had to repaint a 3ft stripe along the wall in dark gray!
Browse
.jpg)
Er - this thread was from 10 years ago??